TSMC sets aside $9 billion for new chip plants, revenues drop by 12%

TSMC has approved a further $9 billion in capital expenditure that will be spent towards building the very best chip manufacturing plants in the world -- a continuation of what TSMC already does -- and will expand into the US and Japan, expanding out from Taiwan.

At least a portion of the $9 billion investment will go into the new chip plants overseas, with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) pushing down into the Ant-Man-style world of 3nm. TSMC will have its 3nm chips ready for a trial production run in 2H 2022.

TSMC is on the 5nm node right now, which we're seeing made into Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops with the super-impressive M1 Max and M1 Pro SoCs. TSMC is hard at work on continuing the work on 5nm which includes the newer N4P node, which is the "third refinement of the 5nm process family" and has up to 22% more power efficiency, and up to 11% performance improvements over the first-gen N5 node.

• Read more: Samsung to 3x its chip production, battles TSMC and chip shortages
• Read more: TSMC's new 4nm process: ready for Apple's new A16 chips for iPhone 14
• Read more: Sony discussing $7 billion investment with TSMC, chip factory in Japan
• Read more: TSMC is reportedly ramping chip production prices by 10-20%

TSMC explains: "Approved capital appropriations of approximately US$9,036.44 million (approximately NT$239,464.84 million) for purposes including: 1) Installation and upgrade of advanced technology capacity; 2) Installation of mature and specialty technology capacity; 3) Installation of advanced packaging capacity; 4) Fab construction, installation of fab facility systems, and capitalized leased assets; 5) First quarter 2022 R&D capital investments and sustaining capital expenditures".